I Followed Two Strangers All The Way Through

You were not even trying to listen and you followed the whole thing.

Two people at the counter, ahead of you in the line, having a completely ordinary conversation about somebody's roof and somebody else's brother and whether the weather was going to hold. Perhaps ninety seconds of it.

And you were holding a bag of flour and thinking about something entirely different, and the whole exchange went into you anyway, all of it, without you deciding to receive any of it.

That was Tuesday. You have told nobody.

I want to say the true thing before anything useful.

You are not going to tell anybody, and the reason is that it would sound like nothing, and you know how it would sound because you have already run the sentence in your head.

I understood two people talking about a roof. There is no way to say that which does not sound like a woman making rather a lot out of very little, and you would rather keep it than watch somebody be kind about it.

So I am not going to tell you to share it with somebody. Let me show you a verse about ears.

The hearing ear and the seeing eye

There is a short line in Proverbs about two ordinary pieces of equipment.

The hearing ear, and the seeing eye, the LORD hath made even both of them. (Proverbs 20:12, King James Version)

The hearing ear.

Now notice that the proverb bothers to say this at all. Ears are the least remarkable thing in the world. Everybody has them, nobody thinks about them, and a proverb that took the trouble to name them is choosing to point at something people walk past.

The verse insists that an ordinary faculty is worth remarking on.

You have something ordinary that the written word thought was worth stopping over, and a common thing has never once been disqualified from being pointed at. Proverbs 20:12 names an ear specifically rather than leaving it unmentioned, and the Holy Spirit is the one standing in a line with a woman and a bag of flour.

Now stay on the phrase even both of them, because it is odd and it is deliberate.

Even both. The proverb is insisting that neither of them is an accident, and the word even is there to close off the reading where one of them happened on its own. The making is claimed for both, emphatically, about a pair of things that nobody considers remarkable.

That is an argument against exactly what you did on Tuesday afternoon.

You have been walking past something the written word refuses to walk past, and an ordinary faculty has never once been a thing that happened by itself. The Holy Spirit is the one who made the ear that took in ninety seconds without being asked to, and Proverbs 20:12 insists on both of them.

And here is the third thing, which is about who made it.

The LORD hath made. It is not describing a skill that was acquired. It is describing equipment that was given, and the proverb puts the credit somewhere other than the person who has the ears.

That may be the most useful sentence in this article for you, because it means being glad about it is not the same as being pleased with yourself.

You have permission to be glad about something without it being self regard, and a thing made by somebody else has never once been a thing to be modest about. Proverbs 20:12 puts the making in God's hands entirely, and the Spirit of God is the one who knows what a woman has not told anybody since Tuesday.

Not trying is the entire finding

Here is the practical half, and it is about where your attention actually was.

Your attention was elsewhere. That is the finding, and it is the whole of it, and it is much larger than understanding a conversation.

Every time anything in that language has been followed, it has cost attention. It has meant pointing yourself at it, holding still, and working, and afterward being slightly tired. That is what listening in a second language is and it is what it has always been.

On Tuesday it cost you nothing. Your attention was on a bag of flour.

You have had something arrive without any attention spent on it, and a thing received for free has never once been the same as a thing paid for. The Spirit of God is the one who knows what an ear did in a line on a Tuesday, and Proverbs 20:12 names the hearing ear as a made thing rather than a trained one.

Now here is why that particular detail is the one that matters.

Attention is limited. It is the scarcest thing anybody has, and for three years every conversation in that language has taken almost the whole of it, which is why they have been exhausting and why rooms with several people talking at once got avoided.

A language that arrives without attention is a language you can use while doing something else. That is what fluent means, practically. Not perfect. Cheap.

You have had something become cheap that used to be expensive, and a thing that costs nothing has never once been the same as a thing that costs everything. Proverbs 20:12 calls an ear a made thing and never a trained one, and the Holy Spirit is the one who has been with a woman through three years of expensive listening.

And here is the thing about it being about a roof, said plainly, because that is the objection you have been using.

The dullness of the subject is the strongest part of the evidence. If it had been a dramatic conversation, or an important one, or one you cared about, you would have been leaning in and paying attention and the whole finding would be gone.

It was about a roof and you were not interested. That is what makes it proof.

You have the best possible evidence precisely because it was about nothing, and a dull subject has never once been a weaker test than an interesting one. The Spirit of God is the one who was in that line, and the written word insists that an ordinary made thing is worth a whole proverb.

Write it down and keep the paper

So here is the assignment, and it solves the problem of having nobody to tell.

Write down the sentence you understood and keep the paper.

One line from that conversation. Whatever you can still recover four days on, in the language if you can get it and in English if you cannot.

On paper, in your own hand, today.

You have one line to get down before it goes, and a record kept for yourself has never once needed somebody else to be glad about it. Proverbs 20:12 stops to name an ordinary faculty rather than passing over it, and the Holy Spirit is the one with a woman at a table with a pen.

And here is what to write underneath it, and it is the sentence that makes the whole thing sayable.

I was thinking about something else.

Because that is the finding and it is the part that transfers. If it ever does get told, that is the sentence, not the one about the roof, and even if nobody is ever told it is the thing that needs to be in your own handwriting on the day the whole account darkens.

Then stop, because one piece of paper is the assignment and nothing else is asked of you today.

You have the one sentence that carries the whole finding, and a plain line about your own attention has never once sounded like making much of nothing. The Spirit of God is the one who knows what it costs a woman to have nobody to tell, and Proverbs 20:12 claims the making of both of them without hesitating.